393.11/1414: Telegram
The Consul General at Nanking (Peck) to the Secretary of State
[Received February 6—9:20 p.m.]
32. The Consulate General has today advised that all women and children and men whose presence is not urgently required in Nanking evacuate. Evacuation will begin morning of 6th, by passenger steamers and trains. Following statement has been released: the American Consulate General at Nanking is apprehensive lest it become daily more important to leave Nanking, should an emergency require such measures. The fighting in the Shanghai area continues with apparently undiminishing intensity and there is little prospect of the railway resuming operation in the future. Navigation on the Yangtze continues, but if hostilities should spread to larger areas this method of reaching Shanghai might, also, become obstructed. The Tientsin-Pukow Railway may be similarly obstructed at its southern terminus.
For these reasons the American Consulate General advises that American women and children in Nanking, as well as those men not engaged in important work here, should leave Nanking temporarily for some other place and return when the present military operations have terminated.
Repeated to Legation, Tokyo and Nanking.